Inga Paltser is a young painter from Severodvinsk known for her watercolor illustrations and paintings of owls. Inga prefers working with paper, but sometimes also creates on textile, wood, and canvas. She started painting in her childhood at the local school of arts. However, after high school Inga decided to become a biologist and now she works as a researcher. Even though art hasn’t become her profession, Inga finds time to create wonderful paintings presented on this website. Her first owls were painted spontaneously – Inga decided to utilize small pieces of watercolor and pastel paper and created two cute owls called “Friends”. Inga’s owls instantly received recognition across the web and social networks and now are greatly loved by thousands of people around the world.

Since Rodrigo Duterte became president last year, his brutal campaign against drugs has claimed thousands of lives. Human rights groups say he is guilty of crimes against humanity, yet that is scant comfort to those mourning loved ones. Here: Constantino de Juan’s seven children sit on a sofa that still bears the bullet hole from their father’s shooting. Juan was preparing a spaghetti dinner on his daughter’s birthday when he was killed. (Photo by James Whitlow Delano/Funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting/The Guardian)

Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)

“Getting to see girls’ bedrooms must have been a teenage obsession for the members of the all-male photographic collective Riverboom. Now that they have more or less grown up, they have decided to transform that dream into a reality. Riverboom’s Gabriele Galimberti and Edoardo Delille are traveling the five continents to see where girls, between the ages of 18 and 30, sleep. They have discovered that girls’ bedrooms are much more then just places where they lay down their heads – they are the places where girls read, love, dream, work and play”. – Gabriele Galimberti. Photo: Katerinai, 27 – Athens, Greece. (Photo by Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom Ltd)

Lovely is the correct work to describe this beautiful paintings series by David Renshaw from “Ted n’ Doris – A Northern Romance”. “Deep down I always knew what I wanted to do for a living and in my school years I remember my father teaching me some basic elements of drawing and I dreamed of one day becoming an artist. Being only really interested in art I left school and studied Graphic Design, after which I started work at a local art gallery as a picture framer. I continued to paint alongside my job, mainly developing techniques and ideas and in 2005 decided it was time to follow my dreams and dedicate myself to painting full time. I always try to make my work feel atmospheric, and I like to pay particular attention to sky and cloud formations as I consider this element of my work to be extremely important to the mood of the finished painting, whether it be a dramatic sunset or a misty moonlit night.”

A giant Santa Claus, created and worn by local artist Ed Terrell, 66, walks home with his son and assistant, Rupanuga, 18, following a ceremony to decorate a scraggly Christmas tree with a single red Bulb in Reading, Pennsylvania, December 7, 2014. A ceremony to decorate the scraggly Christmas tree in Reading, Pennsylvania with a single red bulb, much like Charlie Brown's tree in the animated holiday classic, was postponed to Sunday from Saturday because of rain and cold temperatures, officials said. Officials decided to hold a re-dedication ceremony, which will include a Spanish and English reading from the movie's screenplay, and decorate it with a single red bulb, as in the 1965 animated television special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

“Damien Steven Hirst (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Contractors move Damien Hirst's bronze sculpture of a pregnant woman into positionl on October 16, 2012 in Ilfracombe, England. The bronze-clad, sword-wielding 65ft (20m) statue, named “Verity”, has been controversially given to the seaside town by the artist, on a 20-year loan and was erected by crane on the pier. (Photo by Matt Cardy)

Smoke rises from a house days after part of the ground it was resting on collapsed into Lake Whitney, Texas in this June 13, 2014 file photo. I was covering the controlled burn of a house slowly falling into Lake Whitney due to the decaying cliff underneath. Asked to take photos from an aerial perspective, an instructor and I took off from Grand Prairie Municipal Airport around 9am. The burn, scheduled to start an hour later, was delayed. I love flying, but patience proved challenging as circling for nearly three hours gets boring fast. Once the fire started we only had 15 minutes to take photos because the plane was booked at 1pm. The owners invested their retirement savings in the house and were even advised by geologists that the ground was stable. To watch your investment literally go up in flames must take its toll emotionally. The owners said they don't expect their insurance to cover the loss. (Photo and caption by Brandon Wade/Reuters)